EMPIRE OF DESIRE

Asha Bhosle's body of song is the evolution of desire in Hindi cinema. By giving voice to every kind of fantasy and longing, she liberated us all

- Uday Bhatia

It's about an hour into Jewel Thief (1967). The plot is cheerfully sordid but the music has been respectable. Lata Mangeshkar has sung two chaste songs. Now it's time for some fun. The next two songs are by Asha Bhosle, singing, as she usually did when her elder sister was on the same soundtrack, for the second heroine and the vamp.

First, Raat Akeli Hai, her vocal a languorous sigh as Tanuja tries to seduce Dev Anand. Then comes a remarkable dance number with Helen. “Baithe hai kya uske paas/aaina mujhsa nahi/meri taraf dekhiye (why sit with her/no better reflection than mine/look at me),” the chorus goes. There are naughtier songs by Asha for Helen, but I love the directness of the sexual challenge here. Look at me!

Over 60 years, Asha issued the same challenge in boisterous party songs, intimate seductions, cabaret performances, drunken confessions, item numbers. She sang for sexually confident heroines across eras: Helen in the 1950s, Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi in the '70s, Urmila Matondkar in the '90s. You can track the evolution of most things in Hindi cinema—romance, nationalism, religion, female agency—through Lata's library of song. But to understand the history of desire in Hindi film, you have to listen to Asha.

"She played a defining role in how we've come to understand desire," says Shiv Datt Sharma, a doctoral researcher studying Sanjay Leela Bhansali's cinema in relation to questions of desire and fantasy. “Hindi film songs have always given voice to urges and fantasies that the narrative doesn't allow for. Asha gave this a more sexual twist.”